by Professor Norman Fenton, Dr. Scott McLachlan, Professor Martin Neil and Dr. Magda Osman The focus of almost all current reporting on COVID-19 is on the sharp increase in number of 'new cases' – as shown in the above graph – and the accompanying narrative that we are in the midst of an exponential 'second wave' increase. For example, there were 12,000 ‘new cases’ on October 2nd compared to just 3,000 on September 2nd – a four-fold increase in four weeks, and more than double the new cases per day now than we had at the peak of the pandemic in March. This looks frightening. But the massive increase in ‘new cases’ is almost completely explained by factors that have nothing to do with an increasing population health risk. New cases are simply the count of those who get a positive test result. But almost all of those – as can be seen from the university student ‘cases’ – are either asymptomatic or false positives., i.e. they do not – and will not – show any symptoms of a ‘COVID-19 illness’. Nor will they ‘spread the virus’ to others. Also, contrary to widely believed assumptions, there is no ‘gold standard’ test for COVID-19. A diagnostic process, namely PCR, has been used, but since the outbreak there has been no attempt...